


The Magic of Family

by StormLeviosa



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Brodegies, Claudia-centric, Family Dynamics, Gen, Gift Exchange, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Magic, Merry Christmas, One Shot, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 03:31:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16987305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormLeviosa/pseuds/StormLeviosa
Summary: Claudia is the prodigy, the magic child, but she doesn't love her brother any less.Soren is the youngest of the Kingsguard, the master swordsman, but his father doesn't seem to care.Through thick and thin, siblings are defined by their love for each other (even if it's hard to see sometimes).





	The Magic of Family

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for @ghost-maya on tumblr who requested "Claudia-centric, and I love the Brodegies' dynamic!" for the tdp gift exchange. Hope I did it justice and you have a great Christmas!
> 
> I've taken a lot of liberties with the spells used and stuff because in one season we just don't know enough to have a comprehensive list (just take a look at the wikia - there's 9 dark magic spells on there).

Claudia and Soren learnt very quickly not to ask questions. For Soren, it was when Ma didn't come to say goodnight and when he asked his father where she was his face fell into a blank mask of nothing that Soren couldn't interpret. For Claudia, it was when she asked why the king didn't like magic and “doesn't he think it's the coolest thing ever?” Her dad banned her from his library. Their father had the best interests of the country at heart in everything he did. Country first, children second. There was no point complaining.

 

Claudia liked books. She liked the castle library especially, with its dark wood shelves and tall windows and soft carpets. Books meant escape, meant knowledge, meant something knew and that fascinated her. She read everything: history and languages, science and literature, cooking and geography. Then she discovered the truth about magic. It must have been miss-shelved because it was next to “A History of Katolian Royalty” (volume 3 of 5, concerning the rise of King Ezran the Second and his victory over the southern revolt) but she didn't know where else to put it so she started to read. Magic was better than books. She could use the disgusting beetles that invaded her room over the winter to make the birds obey her voice, use the icky mud that the guards tracked in to stick Soren's boots to the top step, crush a biting fly that cursed them in the summer to send the horses crazy. It was a joke, a lark, and the more she learnt the more she fell in love.

 

Then her father found out. She thought he would be angry, he had never allowed her to learn magic and she knew the books weren’t technically supposed to be available to a ten year old. She was surprised. He was … happy to see her practicing - well, as happy as she’d ever seen him - and seemed almost proud. He called her gifted, took her to his secret room, gave her new spells to practice. She had never really seen her father as someone to look up to but now he was inspirational, a statue to admire. She locked herself away and studied more.

 

It was summer and she took to practicing outside. Under the arching branches of the old oak, she found a spell to die the ends of her hair pink and she thought it a fantastic spell to learn. All she needed was a moonflower, the heart of a flying squirrel and some bloodroot. She ground them together into a paste and spoke the enchantment just so. The glow from the bowl was a brilliant, blinding pink and she glanced away from it to shield her eyes. And in that moment, she tripped. The bowl flew across the courtyard, spraying pink gloop in all directions before landing on Soren’s head. He flailed and dropped his sword. A drop slipped down his nose. She ran. Soren gave chase of course but there was nothing he could do to her that she couldn't counter.

 

She was close to her father because she was clever. He said she had a natural affinity for magic and her thirst for knowledge made learning more easy. She kept to the library mostly. It wasn’t because that was where Prince Callum took his lessons, and what would Soren know about that anyway, the giant galumphing oaf. Still, she watched him sketch and couldn’t quite hide her fascination. She had seen him draw entire rooms from memory, draw the faces of people long since gone from court, and that was interesting. Sometimes, when she was free from her own studies, she would watch him train with Soren. She didn’t envy him. Sword work may look flashy but there was no finesse, no real intelligence behind it. It was a boy’s skill and nothing more. Besides, why would she want to play at swords when dad was teaching her magic, was calling her a prodigy? She saw his frustration, saw Soren’s teasing and thought maybe he agreed. They could have been friends, maybe. But he was a prince. It didn’t matter what he thought or she thought because there were expectations and necessities and she was the daughter of the King’s adviser. One day there would be a match between them. She would be, after all, an eligible noblewoman and while he was the eldest he was still the step-son.  

 

The king is dead and the princes are missing and her ideas ran dry days ago. She hasn’t lost the magic that makes her special but she needs to read more books, gain more knowledge, find the answers to this riddle she can’t quite untangle. Soren finds her after midnight. He is dressed in the soft, unaccented clothes that he only ever really uses for sleeping so she knows it is late but it isn’t until he sits and gives her a cup of warm milk (laced with just enough honey for her taste) and one of the jelly tarts that the youngest prince is so notorious for stealing that she looks up from her book. “It’s after midnight, sis, you should go to bed.” She snorts but takes a sip of her drink anyway. “Look, all these books will still be here come morning and nothing’s going to change now anyway.” He tugs the book away and she doesn’t resist, though he is kind enough to mark the page before closing it. She pokes at the jelly tart idly. “I thought it was going to work. I thought I’d saved the king and the assassins would leave without killing anyone and everything would go back to normal.” Soren knows better than to try to touch her but his presence is comforting all the same.

 

Soren may be an idiot but he isn’t stupid and he sticks by her with dogged brotherly devotion on their mission. She knows and he knows that their father is acting strange (not wrong because father is never wrong and there will be no questions, Claudia) but none of them speak of it. None of them dare. Claudia has magic, black and purple and sparking, at her fingertips and Soren has his sword, bright and shining and strong, to defend them but none of them quite know how far Viren’s reach goes. So they are dance around the topic with half-truths and side steps, both of them knowing the truth but neither willing to state it. Soren, for all his cruel remarks, cares for the little kids he’s come to see as brothers even if Ezran’s glow-toad has a terrible habit of blinding him mid strike and even if Callum would rather scribble in his sketchpad or drool over his sister than practice sword-craft. Claudia has a curious interest in them because Callum can use the primal stone so there must be some magic in him and Ezran is just a little bit strange and knows just a little too much to be entirely normal. And through it all they know that when it comes down to it, that final battle between them, Soren will choose the princes and Claudia will choose knowledge.  

  



End file.
